


Thanksgiving with the Burkles, 2019

by Shadowscast



Series: Illyria's Relationship With Fred Is Complicated [2]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ignoring the Comics, Nostalgia, Post-Chosen, Shmoop, communal living, post-Not Fade Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 15:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21163751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowscast/pseuds/Shadowscast
Summary: Illyria's choice to deceive Fred's parents never ceased to fascinate me.In 2004, I imagined that several months after Not Fade Away, Illyria joined the Burkles for Thanksgiving dinner.  (See part 1 of this series, a drabble.)In 2019, I wondered what it might look like if s/he had done so every year for fifteen years.(These days, Fred lives on a ranch in Nevada with some friends and colleagues, and her parents travel to visit her.  There have been a lot of changes in fifteen years.  Roll with it.)





	Thanksgiving with the Burkles, 2019

**November 28, 2019 (American Thanksgiving)**

**A ranch in Nevada.**

Faith careened into the kitchen, bringing with her the smell of sweaty horse. "Where's Illyria? Roger and Trish are here."

Willow looked up from the pie crust she was cutting. She absently brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes, leaving a smear of flour on her forehead. "I think he's playing Mario Kart in the rec room with Spike and Sabrina."

"Got it." Faith departed as quickly as she'd arrived.

Kennedy smirked and licked her thumb, and used it to clean the flour from Willow's face. "Another year of lying to the parents?"

Willow wrinkled her nose. "It's a holiday tradition."

* * *

"Yo," Faith hailed the trio in the rec room. "The Burkles are here."

"Right then luv," Spike said, nudging Illyria's knee with his own. "Fred it up to the nines."

Illyria took a breath; exhaled, and faded from blue god to smiling brunette. And then yelped in cute Texan outrage.

"Gotcha!" Sabrina gloated. "Look mom, I got Illyria with a blue shell!"

"Not like those buggers can _miss_," Spike murmured.

"That's nice, kiddo," Faith said. "Fred, get your sweet girly ass to the door."

* * *

"Mom, Dad, it's so good to see you!" Fred enthused, wrapping each parent in turn in a big hug. "How was the flight?"

"You can probably guess. Not enough leg room and they charge you for everything," Roger Burkle groaned. "But it's always worth it to spend the holiday with you!"

Xander trailed the Burkles in, carrying their luggage. "Are we putting Roger and Trish in the dorm?" he asked.

"No," Faith said, having followed Fred into the foyer. "We switched it around. One of the baby slayers decided not to go home for the holiday, so we're going to put Dawn, Andrew, and what's-his-face in the dorm with her, Giles and Olivia on the pullout in the rec room, and the Burkles in my room. I'm gonna bunk with you and Spike."

The elder Burkles immediately went into a predictable ramble of we-couldn't-possibly, surely-there's-a-broom-closet-you-could-put-us-in, etc. Before Faith could jump in to assure them just _how_ little she minded sharing a bed with Spike and Xander, Fred grabbed one of the suitcases and drew her parents inwards with a cheery "C'mon Mom and Dad, I know you'll be wanting to freshen up before dinner!"

* * *

The Rome contingent arrived an hour later, conveyed by Buffy in the minibus.

"Hello! We're here! We love you all! Is there time to go riding before supper?" was Dawn's enthusiastic greeting. Even more so than last year, her accent had hints of British and Italian.

"You want to go _riding_?" Giles asked her, blinking with muzzy astonishment. "We've been traveling for eighteen hours."

"Yeah, and I am so cramped-up. I want to breathe fresh air and _move_," Dawn said.

Olivia patted Giles' shoulder. "She's still young. Unlike us."

"Riding—horses?" asked Andrew's boyfriend. "I'd like to try that."

So after some negotiations, Faith agreed to escort Dawn, Andrew, and boyfriend-of-the-year on a short ride around the grounds. ("Don't _call_ him that," Dawn scolded Faith, with an eye-roll, out of earshot of the others. "Andrew says Marco's _the one_! They're talking about getting _married_!") Sabrina came along too to help, since if there was anything she loved more than riding horses, it was bossing around adults who didn't know much about horses.

"Has she shown any signs yet?" Giles asked Buffy, quietly, as they watched the small party walk off towards the stable.

Buffy shook her head. "But she's only ten."

"There was a nine-year-old girl in Tanzania last year," Giles reminded her.

"But most slayers aren't called until they're thirteen or fourteen, at least," Buffy said. This had been true since the day of Willow's spell.

"We have no reason to think that slayers' kids are more likely to be called," Xander objected. He always brought this up, a little anxiously, whenever the topic arose.

"Before Sabrina's generation, there hardly _were_ any slayers' kids," Kennedy pointed out. "But try not to stress out about it, Xander. Being a slayer doesn't mean what it used to mean."

* * *

Dinner was outdoors, and after dark. As soon as the sun went down, Angel and Spike helped Buffy move the tables and chairs onto the lawn. Fred was in charge of lighting, and she accepted company but not help from Roger and Trish. She joked cheerfully about how electrical engineering was just applied physics, and therefore she was eminently qualified to run extension cords out of the house.

"Just as long as you don't open any extra-dimensional portals!" Trish said, and they all laughed. They could laugh about it now.

"Sixteen ... seventeen," Buffy finished counting the chairs. "That's all of them!"

Just then, Angel's ringtone sounded—'I'm too sexy' by Right said Fred, a prank from six months ago that nobody had admitted to. Everyone assumed (correctly) that Spike and Illyria were behind it.

"Somebody's _got_ to show me how to change that back," Angel muttered, like he did every time—and then he looked at the screen and his face lit up. "It's Connor. I'll take it in the house."

* * *

"How's Connor?" Buffy asked when she next saw Angel, which was when they were all sitting down at the laden table.

"Good," Angel said. "He's in L.A., spending Thanksgiving with the Reillys. He said he can stop here on Monday, though, on his way back to New York."

"Who's Connor?" asked Trish Burkle.

"Angel's son from a previous relationship," Buffy explained, squeezing Angel's shoulder in a casually loving gesture.

"Oh?" Roger lifted his eyebrows and looked curiously between Buffy and Angel. "I thought vampires couldn't have children."

"There were special circumstances," Angel muttered into his mug of warm blood.

"So we shouldn't hold out hope for the two of you...?" Trish murmured, sounding a little wistful.

"Between Sabrina and the baby slayers, we _all_ have our hands full here," Fred drawled.

"Well, but they aren't _babies_, these slayers," Trish said, glancing down the table towards Clara, the one trainee who had stayed at the ranch for the holiday. "They're teenagers. And Sabrina will be getting there too, before you know it. Wouldn't you just love to have a real baby around again?"

"Oh, mom," Fred rolled her eyes affectionately. "Don't start. I'm _way_ too busy with my research to think about that kind of thing."

"I hear you, sister," Dawn said from across the table, and offered Fred a high five.

"Marco and I are talking about adopting!" Andrew contributed eagerly from just down the table.

"Lord help us all," Giles muttered into his napkin.

"Ahem!" Buffy called out. "AHEM! Attention. Let's all hold hands, for a moment of quiet gratitude and reflection."

"I'm grateful every year that we're not attacked by a spirit bear," Xander said.

"I'm grateful every year that I'm not tied up," Spike said. "No, wait..."

Kennedy and Faith shared a smirk.

But then they all held hands, and the whispers and muffled laughter around the table faded into something resembling a respectful silence.

"I'm grateful," Buffy said, "for everyone who is able to be here with us today. I'm grateful for being surrounded by loved ones. And I'm grateful for everyone who's out there in the world, fighting the good fight, because a burden shared is _so_ much lighter. And I'm grateful for everyone who came before us and passed on—for the way they shaped us, the way they saved us, and for who we are because of them."

Perhaps Fred's hair gleamed a little blue at that moment—but who could really tell, when the yard was lit by strings of brightly-coloured electric lanterns?

"Amen," breathed Trish Burkle, squeezing her daughter's hand.

"Amen," echoed Illyria the god-king, softly and with love.

* * *

**Meanwhile, in another dimension.**

"Thank you for showing me that," Joyce said.

Cordelia smiled. "Same time next year?"

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, there have been a lot of changes in the past fifteen years. Among them, I'm sure you were fascinated and surprised to see that:
> 
> 1) Illyria is using masculine pronouns now, and  
2) Buffy can drive!
> 
> * * *
> 
> PS: Sabrina is Xander and Faith's daughter. Xander, Spike and Faith are in a three-way relationship, but Faith has her own bedroom. Was that clear?
> 
> Many thanks to Yourlibrarian for beta-reading!


End file.
